


Silence

by kanadka



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 01:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5987496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanadka/pseuds/kanadka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Early days of Galactica's flight from the destroyed colonies. Adama is known for saving Tigh from himself, but that road goes both ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Plaid_Slytherin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Plaid_Slytherin/gifts).



They have drinks together often, and the themes are usually the same. Certain constants are welcoming to a man in the august of his service. Bill Adama cherishes all their evenings together, but it's the ones that make him upset that he prefers. The ones where he isn't are him and Saul, shooting the shit; him and Saul, talking about people they both don't like; him and Saul, talking about anything. Stupid things. Nonsense things.

When they talk about the wretchedness of their own histories, the derision of humanity, there is something stronger that binds them, and it's not in their spun-out arguments when truth erupts out of anger. Inside the long silences, hung like heavy towels on a clothesline, drooping with meaning, is a heartfelt-ness that Bill has felt with few people. There is a depth that Bill does not get with anybody.

But it's uncomfortable, all the same. Because if he's honest about it, you can cheat on someone without sleeping around. You can have a relationship with someone without sleeping with them. In the moments when nothing is said between them, and the pauses are full of more meaning than the words as they dance around things that Bill ( _and_ Saul, Bill thinks) does and doesn't want to say, there is great discomfort. This is one of the things that helped pull him away from his family. This is one of his many guilts.

And at the same time, Saul brings a calm to these evenings that he can't possibly see as shameful.

\--

Their drinks are sombre the night of the service for the dead on Galactica.

"It was a good service," says Saul. "Stately. Strong. Think Jumper and Polecat would've liked that."

"Didn't do it for them." Jumper serving on the Diomedes, Polecat become Admiral Romier on the Chirion. The last of the contingent from the Brenik, that hellhole that marked Saul. Which not even Ellen knew about, but Saul's discussed it with Bill countless times. Both gone. All gone. Has a service for the dead ever been for so many people? The halls of Galactica littered with tokens and votives. No one but Saul would remember those two officers. "Or hell, maybe I did."

"We needed it," says Saul. More quietly he says, "You needed it." When Bill looks up he levels their gaze. "Command looks good on you. So many people chanting at you and it's not a frakkin' cult. One of us has to be the one to know what to do."

"Things're gonna have to change around here," Bill says.

"We'll change with them," replies Saul.

"Not - too much," he says. "Not so much we don't recognise ourselves." He already has misgivings. The pursuit of lawlessness to restore order, even temporarily is a frightening thought.

A silence presides. At last, Saul speaks. "There's no thirteenth tribe, is there, Bill."

The silence between them is one of the longer ones. In it - in Saul's face - he reads how Saul pieced it together. He reads the esteem that Saul accords him for having given them some hope in a time of unthinkable fear and horror and isolation - that there might be others out there, strewn amid the stars, that they could come home to. "I told them all, that we might not be worth saving," he says. Because sometimes those fallible humans lie to all of the last of humanity.

Bill does not regret any of it. There is no point to regret.

"I look at you and I can't believe that," says Saul. It takes a moment for Bill to admit to himself that he agrees. Obviously Saul, out of all the humans in the universe, is worth saving. Because Bill's done it a thousand times and is prepared to do it a thousand and one more. Because it always results in something good. And because Bill needs him.

Then he drains his drink, and they say no more. The discomfort returns and they sneak glances at each other - from time to time, they even go as far as holding them for the duration of a few seconds, when their eyes bore into each other and Bill feels naked. When Saul leaves much later that night, Bill feels lighter.


End file.
